LEE, NATHANIEL, a dramatic poet, was the son of a clergyman, and born about the end of the seventeenth century. He was educated at Westminster School, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge. After quitting the university, and remaining for some time an unsuccessful dangler about court, he began to write for the stage, and between 1675 and 1681 produced a new play every year. Poverty and a wild imagination, however, overturned his reason, and he was confined in Bedlam for four years. In 1688 he resumed his pen, and, though subject to recurring fits of insanity, he completed two plays between that period and his death, which happened in 1690, as Cibber says, during a night frolic in the street. In the latter part of his life he was dependent upon charity. Of his eleven tragedies, Theodosius, Alexander the Great, and Lucius Junius Brutus have alone taken a respectable position on the stage. His genius for tragedy, commended highly by Addison and other contemporary writers, is completely overborne by the wildness of his imagination, which often leads him into extravagant metaphor and turgid bombast. These faults, however, are partially redeemed by a graceful eloquence and true tenderness in describing the softer feelings of nature. Lee was an imitator of Dryden, whom he assisted in writing Edipus and the Duke of Guise.